"It plays like gangbusters," says the Washington Post of Lothar Zagrosek's acclaimed Ring cycle (of which this is the first installment), "and offers a valid cultural critique of a work whose role through the past hundred years of German history has been complicated, to say the least. The cast … gives its all under conductor Lothar Zagrosek's engrossing leadership."

"Picture quality and camera angles are first class … but the main attraction is for those who are neither Wagnerians nor familiar with this work and who can get easily bored watching static artists on stage delivering boring monologues, none of which happens with this version because its chief virtue resides in its original concept from Stuttgart's innovative Director, Klaus Zehelein. He invited four different Directors to consider the Ring individually and then gave each of them a single opera, with no collaboration whatsoever. Each had his own cast, set, costume and lighting designers…. Das Rheingold takes place in a bath house which appears to be taken out of a Thomas Mann short story."—Musical Opinion